Author
Topic: Hakuoki - Demon of the Fleeting Blossom

Since there are quite a few people here who seem to enjoy VNs, I thought it was time for a thread.For those unaware, Hakuoki is an otome game, or basically a dating sim targeted towards females. The VN isn't really a "hard" otome, more loose, and has a wider audience than some other VNs in the genre.

Cyril- The first time I played, I just made decisions willy-nilly and defaulted to the Hijikata path and Game Over'd. I went back to some earlier spots but game over'd again. Next I tried the Heisuke path and Game Over'd. The one time I got a good ending was the Okita path. Hijikata's was probably my favorite, story-wise. I haven't tried the Harada or Saitoh paths yet.

If you go to the "Record of Service" tab on the title screen, you can start at chapters you've left off on. However, when you get a game over it's best to restart from the beginning and turn on the "Fast Forward" feature so you can speed through stuff, because sometimes starting from a later chapter doesn't think you made the "right" decisions in an earlier one.

So yeah, like most visual novels, it's more-or-less multiple playthrough. However, it's possible mid-game to rewind to earlier parts and even redo decisions- kinda like how we kept multiple bookmarks and dog-ears when we read Choose Your Own Adventure books.

One negative I have(though it could be a positive, depending) is that it's extremely obtuse to figure out what leads to a certain character's path. There's almost no indicator of what choices will lead to.

Unless you turn on the animation where a right choice makes cherry blossoms sparkle on a dude's torso.

And, personally, I liked that decisions had a lot of red herrings. I've played too many visual novels where the paths were boringly predictable so the reward playing "hard to get" with me was fun. I liked the chase.

I got a decent Saito ending my first time without any help. He's pretty easy to get affection with, you simply be calm and rational and don't always jump on the opportunity immediately. I'm thinking of going Harada next, because he's a sweet guy. I hear he has the best ending of the bunch, too.